Country Folks

Lori McKenna is a local talent with a national following. She’s a married mom who began her career at a coffee house in a neighboring town on open-mic night.

One of Lori’s earliest boosters was Dick Pleasants, a disc jockey at WUMB in Boston. After a long illness, Dick passed away recently. Lori will be appearing tonight in a tribute concert at the Somerville Theatre. Which is, curiously and incorrectly, listed as being in Cambridge.

https://wumb.org/watch-wumbs-remembering-dick-pleasants-concert-live-online/

The show will be carried live and I’ll be tuning in. Also appearing will be Tom Rush, one of the grand, old names in New England Folk music. His cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Urge for Going” is a classic recording.

Fun fact: When Taylor Swift is in the area, selling out shows at Gillette Stadium, she sometimes stays at Lori’s house.

Fusion Power

There were multiple security failures that led to the disaster on 9/11/01. Inadequate passenger screening at Boston’s Logan Airport was one of the last of them, so now we all remove our belts and shoes for the TSA.

Before that fateful day, there was a daily intelligence briefing with a late warning about Osama bin Laden. A warning that George W. Bush chose to minimize, if not ignore.

Much earlier than that, there was an appalling lack of coordination between the FBI and the CIA. So now we have Fusion Centers, as explained last night on the PBS NewsHour.

Spamalot

Let’s see what’s in today’s spam mailbox. Yep, it’s the same, old stuff, but it’s being updated by somebody, as indicated by the reference to Southwest Airlines.

This is only a screen shot. Safe to click/tap.

These messages are obvious phishing attempts. I started receiving them a long time ago, after a friend’s contact list was obtained in an e-mail hack.

I use various e-mail addresses, over half a dozen of them, for different purposes. This particular collection of spam arrives in my primary account for personal communication. The source of the spam seems to come and go, and every time it disappears for a few weeks, even months, it reappears. I may delete this account, but it will take a while to migrate everybody who writes to me at that address.

Pelé Postscript

The death of soccer superstar Pelé has received a lot attention. Someone I haven’t seen mentioned in the American coverage of Pelé is Xuxa, who is equally famous in Brazil. According to Xuxa, her relationship with Pelé lasted for six years.

Pelé made at least one appearance on Xou da Xuxa.

The Glory Days of Xuxa, as they’re known in Brazil, began with the introduction of a new troupe of dancing helpers. Wearing hot pants and go-go boots, they were called Las Paquitas.

The original show ended when Disney brought it to America, where Xuxa was a total flop. Her English was very weak, and the “Krusty the Clown” concept for a kid’s show failed to translate to the states. Considering her phenomenal popularity at home, it must have been quite a disappointment for Xuxa, who turns 60 in March.

The Wall of the Street

This must be documentary week. After “The Lie Detector” on American Experience, I binge-watched the four-part Netflix series, MADOFF: The Monster of Wall Street.

The substance is excellent, but the style is annoying. I agree with everything in this review from The Daily Beast.

Berlinger… falls back on his worst habit: staging dramatic recreations that unnecessarily tip the action toward melodrama.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/netflixs-madoff-the-monster-of-wall-street-is-a-ponzi-scheme-horror-story

The narrative provided by Diana Henriques in the series has great clarity. So it’s no surprise that her book, The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust, was adapted into a movie.

This pre-existing dramatization of the Madoff story further proves the point made in The Daily Beast review of the Netflix series.

There’s little reason to have actors playing Madoff and his associates in dialogue-free sequences designed to accompany interview snippets.

The DeNiro movie is on HBO Max. I’ll get to it after watching the first part of another new documentary, Frontline’s “Global Spyware Scandal: Exposing Pegasus.”

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/global-spyware-scandal-exposing-pegasus/

Ask Me No Questions, I’ll Tell You No Lies

A couple of months ago I mentioned borrowing some images from Ken Quattro, who had posted them on Facebook.

Toth’s Angel and Ghost

Ken is one of the sources appearing in “The Lie Detector,” an excellent new American Experience documentary on PBS. The popularization of lie detectors — which are valid only as an intimidation tactic — has a comic book connection.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/lie-detector/

The documentary doesn’t touch upon another device, that is also used for truth-seeking interrogation. Scientology’s E-meter.